Point of book etiquette

[owl]

For what length of time is it permissible to keep a borrowed book? The book in question is a mass market paperback of about 350 pages. I've had it for about 10 days already and I haven't had time to start it.

Ton that subject, is it just me, or are American mass market paperbacks of poorer quality than British ones? I've bought American editions of SF books off amazon, and nearly all of them have ink that smudges like newsprint (Baen Books, that's you I'm looking at), or text that is misaligned so that it's running down into the spine or off the edge of the page.

Somewhat to my surprise, it appears that the Assembly is actually going to assemble.

Comments

[sunshine-queen.livejournal.com]

I've never had ink smudge on me ever, so maybe it's just the books? Hm...

[sreya.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I'd say for a book of that length, probably a month is about right without mentioning anything. If you're only partway through by then, you can probably extend that by talking to the owner about where you are and getting excited about it. Book lovers love that sort of thing. :~p

[emmy-roo.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I haven't found many that are that misaligned, though many of them will have ink smudges on a few pages. Perhaps you are ordering the cheapest ones, so you get more defective copies?

[(Anonymous)]

My general rule of thumb is that a month is about average for borrowed books.

[leeflower.livejournal.com]

I concur with the month consensus.

As far as American paperbacks, I think you might just have bad luck, but I don't order too many from Baen, so it could be they're defective and the bookstore worker-bees just sort the defective ones out for me ahead of time.

And yeah... Assembly's actually happening. It'll be interesting to see how that goes (for suitably Chinese definitions of 'interesting,' perhaps, but who's to say).

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I've had much more trouble with American paperbacks falling apart despite being quite new, and with the ink problem you mention. Also, whilst some of the American covers paperback SF novels get are lovely (and some British ones are quite, quite vile), the vast majority of them strike me as quite overcrowded and ugly compared to the British versions. I don't think I've ever had a problem with misaligned text though.

I think if it was my book I'd get a bit worried after a couple of months - ten days is nothing.